ERP Adoption: Is it Worth the Investment?

Accelerated Implementation Versus Traditional Implementation

It is well-known that as implementation of ERP begins, managers anticipate the organizational changes necessary to successfully implement and use the ERP, and they begin making these changes. Thus, some types of organizational benefits of the implementation surface early. It is necessary to understand the different types of organizational benefits to know which organizational benefits might surface during ERP implementation and which are likely to surface later. Further, some types of benefits, such as low cost of operations, are largely internal to the organization, i.e., do not depend on the actions of competing organizations. Other types of benefits, such as profitability, depend on the actions of competing organizations. For example, is the competitor also installing a superior enterprise system so that profits, if any, that the enterprise system bestows have to be shared? Such a view of organizational benefits from ERP first implies that the implementation of an ERP by one organization must not be viewed in isolation, but the implementation of similar ERP by other companies must be considered as well. It also implies that the typology of organizational benefits must be coherent in an accounting sense so that the true pattern of rise, fall and trade-off between benefits are visible in the analysis.